11 ms·

I grew up in the USSR in the 80s, so my view of what a shortage actually feels like are quite different. Since the pandemic, there are 3 shortages that were in

I grew up in the USSR in the 80s, so my view of what a shortage actually feels like are quite different. Since the pandemic, there are 3 shortages that were in the news that were relevant to my family: toilet paper, chips/automotive, and ammunition (my father in law and I got into target shooting during the pandemic) I would say the max impact of all these things was: you had to work a LITTLE harder, pay a LITTLE more, and wait a LITTLE longer to get what you wanted. For example, in USSR I remember wiping my ass with cut-up newspaper for months at a time. That's what a TP shortage / deficit is. Over the last year, the max I had to deal with was going to a second store and not being able to buy lots and lots at once. We ended up having to buy a car this summer. Shortage manifested in two ways - some trims/models were not available. IE - you could still get a car at any point, just may not be the exact one you want. We ended up ordering one because we cared about something specific and despite warning, we picked it up in a few weeks. In contrast, my dad had to wait something like 10 years to get his Lada Niva. What this means to me is our supply chains are INCREDIBLY resilient. The fact that these things basically translated into mild inconveniences is quite impressive.

raspasov 5y ago
My experience exactly. Growing up in the 90s in Bulgaria, my parents had to line up for hours or half a day to fill up gas in the car. This went on for weeks/months. If I complain that people are complaining too much in the modern world, I would be complaining as well. So I won't, otherwise it will be an infinite loop.
- deleted 5y ago
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- akomtu 5y ago
  Someone from North Korea could tell you that USSR people had an easy life. We don't see those stories on HN because there's only one person in NK who has internet.
  - Radim 5y ago
    True, there's always someone who has it worse. Obligatory Monty Python sketch: "I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock in the night, half an hour before I went to bed. … And when we got home, our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!" - Monty Python, Four Yorkshiremen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEIApUNVBKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEIApUNVBKg
  - raspasov 5y ago
    Absolutely. The most horrific documented history in terms of human conditions I’ve encountered is Unit 731 in Imperial Japan.
    - akomtu 5y ago
      Those were Chinese villagers who could tell North Koreans that whining about lack of food is a privelege when you can go outside and see skies.
contravariant 5y ago
Not sure there ever was a real shortage in toilet paper. I mean sure the stores ran out at some point, but that's mostly because you can only realistically have so many toilet paper in the store at once, so if people buy more for whatever insane reason then it's going to run out soon. The supply didn't ever run into any issues as far as I can tell.
- javagram 5y ago
  There was still supply of “toilet paper” but not of the kind that was sold in the store. Normally large amounts of commercial paper was sold but that wasn’t in grocery stores and sales stopped because of offices closing. Things got figured out eventually both as panic buying subsided and some commercial paper (single rolls, etc) was diverted to the grocery store supply chain.
  - scott_s 5y ago
    Correct; there was a market shift, where all of the demand for commercial toilet paper went to consumer toilet paper. Because of that shift, there was a real shortage in consumer toilet paper. Unfortunately, the myth that this shortage was entirely an induced panic seems to have caught on. For more, see https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/4/3/21206942/toilet-paper-coronavirus-shortage-supply-chain https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/4/3/21206942/toilet-paper...
    - bsder 5y ago
      > Unfortunately, the myth that this shortage was entirely an induced panic People don't get that even a 25% jump in consumption is going to take quite a while to rattle through our optimized supply chains. Everything has been optimized to the penny for exactly the consumption as it exists--and not a whit more. Inventory anywhere is seen as a dire business failing to be eradicated. As such, there is zero cushion against even small demand changes. Maximally efficient is minimally robust.
- raspasov 5y ago
  There might have been a short-term panic over-buying plus the fact that everybody all of a sudden was staying home (and *ahem*, going to the toilet at home more) as opposed to going to the office. That's just a hypothesis, I haven't looked at any data. But your point is essentially correct, I assume it just takes a bit of time to shift the supply from commercial/business channels (delivering to office buildings in the city) to consumer ones (delivering to stores like Costco, Walmart, etc).
ozim 5y ago
In absolute terms you are right. In relative terms well in east block in 80s you were not expecting to have anything on the shelves when you went to the shop. You were expecting to wipe with newspaper for rest of your life and sometimes if you are lucky get rolls of TP. When we live nowadays, we plan that we go to the shop and we will have it. Like a car example, your father was not planning a road trip next year because he knew he is not going to get a car. Nowadays people might plan a road trip make arrangements and then be surprised by car shortage - who is losing more? I expect that person who made arrangements for a road trip and then got nothing because there are no ICUs to make cars.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  On one level I agree with you: happiness = reality - expectations. However what I am saying is that we don't actually have real impact on our lives today. From what I can tell, nobody actually failed to get a car and had to cancel their road trip (to use your example)
  - bdcravens 5y ago
    Tangent, but wouldn't it be happiness = expections - reality?
    - sk5t 5y ago
      No, high but unmet expectations are the opposite of happiness.
- raspasov 5y ago
  Perhaps surprised that they can't make the trip in the car with the specifically selected Premium Leather Seats and the Piano Black trim within the next 2 weeks? :) In all seriousness, that's not entirely true. From first person accounts I've heard, in the early 80s and throughout the 70s everything was more or less OK in the Soviet block. Of course the selection was not as great as in the West, but essential 20th century conveniences were available. In the late 80s things really started to fall apart and it became painfully obvious that their economic model is not competitive and ultimately unsustainable.
KozmoNau7 5y ago
As an observation, we have become extremely accustomed to the unprecedented easy with which we can buy things, from a gigantic selection of vendors, levels of quality and design, and other (real or artificial) differentiators. Now that this comfortable situation is starting to unravel even slightly, the reaction is one of incredulous disbelief. "Surely this can't be happening, we live in prosperous times!" seems to be the gist of a lot of people's reactions. We have become so used to (near-)instant gratification, that maybe we need to take a step back and recalibrate our desires, demands and expectations. I'm glad my family has always had a modest outlook and ability to comfortably live within our means, often finding creative solutions when money was a bit short. It has ingrained in me that compromise is not a hateful thing, realistic expectations make everything more manageable. For instance, I don't hold the specific car I own• to be some essential part of my identity or image. I take the more practical view that if it performs the tasks I need and meets an acceptable level of quality and economy, I am satisfied. Then it doesn't matter if it's a Mercedes, a Toyota or a KIA. If someone looks down on me or thinks less of me because they don't agree with my choice, then that is their problem, not mine. • I don't own one right now, but it goes for any other possession, really. Moderation needs to come back into fashion, in a big way.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  Is there a button for, I don't agree 100% but your comment shouldn't be gray?
  - KozmoNau7 5y ago
    People really don't like having their overconsumption and shallow consumerism-based self-images pointed out.
    - squarefoot 5y ago
      And some of them make money out of it; some probably read also HN. Upvoted, of course.
- chihuahua 5y ago
djitz 5y ago
Cubans have a saying “cuando no hay papel de baño, el culo aprende a leer.” When there is no toilet paper, your ass learns to read.
- apengwin 5y ago
  What does this mean, actually? Are you picking and choosing which newspaper sections to keep, or are you just sitting on the toilet a lot more?
  - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
    You’re wiping with a newspaper.
- A_non_e-moose 5y ago
  Wonder how long that saying will last when ebook readers and paper-free trends hit that market.
- mbg721 5y ago
  For all the horrors that go along with living in a failed state, I'm sort of looking forward to a new golden age of dark humor.
vishnugupta 5y ago
Similar experience. In India I tagged along with my father when he applied for a physical phone connection when I was in class 8. By the time the application made it through the bureaucratic labyrinthine and all sorts of hurdles I was in class 10. So now a days when I see someone rant for 2 month wait period for a car I silently laugh. The current generation though is growing up getting conditioned to instant gratification. Listening to my favourite song for me, while growing up, meant convincing my father to give me money, walking to a cassette store, wading through their catalogue and finally get it. So for me waiting comes naturally. In a way for my generation (and earlier) waiting is second nature. Wait in line for movie tickets, at bank counter, ration stores, just to name a few.
- u801e 5y ago
  > when I see someone rant for 2 month wait period for a car I silently laugh. Things improve, so people's expectations change. People from generations ago could "silently laugh" at someone complaining about a missed flight and a long layover when they had to travel by sea instead of air.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- curiousgal 5y ago
  Having grown up in a Third World country makes almost every issue people around me complain about nontrivial. But that doesn't mean that they are. Just because others had/have it harder doesn't make those issues any less valid.
  - vishnugupta 5y ago
    > ...doesn't make those issues any less valid. Certainly, the issues are indeed valid for them and nothing to be scoffed at. What is fascinating about India of my growing up years was that most of the scarcity was artificial, mostly due to government regulations and policies. So money didn't speed up things in a big way. But all that has changed unrecognisably now. Now, if one has money there's almost nothing that can't be gotten.
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
You are just a little early. TP and ammo were user-caused panics. Superficial. Microchip/Atmel just gave me 50 week lead times on really common chips. My products use these common chips, so do a TON of other things. If you can’t buy a tooshbrush or a thermostat in a few months, you might not realize it’s because of chip shortage or containers. I think things are going to get worse. Our supply chains aren’t resilient, more than they are so large it takes a lot/longer time to see effects. I think we’re going to hit the peak of the bullwhip soon and it’s going to surprise a lot of people what shutting the world down for almost 2 years will do.
- cascom 5y ago
  It seems like ammo has been in experiencing semi-perpetual issues for the past 12+ years
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    That’s not unfair. The biggest “real” one I can think of was Sandy Hook, the biggest “fake” (consumer caused and perpetuated) was the 2016 election, after Trump won, 22lr ammo was impossible to find. Gun store talk is always bad (said as a gun guy that doesn’t like gun store bullshit) but this was on a whole different level. This latest… similar, but worse obviously. At least there is a real world event tied to it. It’s coming down, but I feel like between inflation and commodity prices we aren’t going to see pre-panic prices ever again. Extremely skeptical I’ll be able to get 1k of 9mm delivered to my door under $250 going forward let alone the previous $160. It’s a larger condition that there is distrust of government, the spread of bullshit at light speeds, diminishing personal freedoms, and a media cheering it all on. So I get why people are hording bullets a bit, but it’s funny that actual good defensive ammo isn’t more sought after. Just the cheap training stuff.
    - newsclues 5y ago
      Ammo is weird because you have the government and consumer markets. We only see shortages for consumers. High prices and a larger market should attract increased manufacturing capacity. Could be interesting for a new highly automated robotic factory to bring down costs?
syshum 5y ago
>>What this means to me is What this means to me is capitalism is awesome, and people attempting to destroy it or replace it would rather have the world you describe from the USSR... Remember kids, with capitalism you some times have bread lines, with socialism you some times have bread....
- squarefoot 5y ago
  Capitalism is not bad per se, but capitalism without control can be disastrous. We have not yet reached the point in which corporations took over on governments; the process already started, but the complete takeover at global scale will need some time, from several decades to a couple centuries or so. When it will happen, living under socialism or capitalism won't be that different anymore for those who are not part of the elite.
  - syshum 5y ago
    Corporations are not capitalism... Corporation are fictitious legal entities created by government. With out government there can be no corporations. Corporatism is not "capitalism without control", Corportism is the direct result of governments picking winners and loosers in the market place. It is the direct result of government putting their hands on the scale of the market. So expecting government to solve the problem it created is foolish. I have no love for corporation, or corporatism. you want to eliminate that I am all for it. However lets stop blaming capitalism for the problems created by government
    - squarefoot 5y ago
      That's the "without control" I was referring to.
paganel 5y ago
> For example, in USSR I remember wiping my ass with cut-up newspaper for months at a time. As a Romanian who grew up as a kid in the '80s and the '90s I'm sort of glad that this was a shared Eastern-European experience, it's something that people from the other side of the wall will most probably never understand completely. When I was spending the summer at my grandparents me and my brother were sometime wiping our asses off with pages taken from "Munca de Partid" (roughly translated as "Party Work"), which was the official magazine of the Romanian Communist Party's Central Committee. Our granddad had been a communist mayor in the village and he had almost the entire collection of those magazines. [1] https://www.cosminnasui.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Munca-de-partid-nr-2-1989.jpg https://www.cosminnasui.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Munca...
- nickpp 5y ago
  I still wonder what effect all that lead (from the newspaper ink) will have on our rectums' health.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, did no one transition to using water jets like in Asia or was that even more expensive?
  - paganel 5y ago
    In the countryside most of the times we didn't have running water at the place where we were doing our thing, it was essentially just a hole in the ground with some stuff around it. In the city usually the apartment bathrooms were too small for a bidet-like appliance to be installed, and even if the place had been there the communist authorities/institutions that had been building those apartments were regarding the bidets as too "bourgeois".
code_duck 5y ago
Most Americans have absolutely no idea what it is like to endure that sort of hardship. I mean, in the most extreme examples I know adults who act like they're going to starve because their peas were touching their potatoes.
- midev 5y ago
  > Most Americans have absolutely no idea what it is like to endure that sort of hardship Which is great! Despite the flaws of capitalism, it's literally the point! As supply chains were impacted, new businesses and solutions filled the void. Given the vast amount of competition in things like toilet paper, automotive, etc, "shortages" just meant not getting your favorite brand for a few weeks. > I know adults who act like they're going to starve because their peas were touching their potatoes. I would take this over the horror shows of communism any day. It's never a knock to say "your country is so good you've never had the massive hardships we have had!"
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Just one (somewhat trivial but perhaps not) thing was all the entrepreneurial activity by individual and adjacent businesses to create more stylish/higher quality/etc. masks. Now perhaps one could make a rational argument that we'd be better off with just a bunch of standard N95 masks period. But people are funny and one shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
  - code_duck 5y ago
    Yes, my criticism is not directed towards the effectiveness of the supply chain. It’s true that we are mostly rich with consumer goods. However there are also numerous very serious problems with how we live in the United States, such as sustainability, even distribution of resources, efficiency and waste. My point was that people in the United States do not have experience dealing with even very minor hardships effectively. If they were presented with truly difficult physical situations similar to what people in many parts of the world deal with frequently, they would not be able to handle it effectively on a number of levels.
notheretoo 5y ago
That’s because the shortages you experienced were real. The shortages we’ve had over the pandemic are greatly exaggerated by our trash tabloid media which vice is a prime offender.
seriousquestion 5y ago
That's important perspective. What did it look like in the early days of the shortage tho? Did it start off as minor and become more severe over time? Or did it go from plentiful to none right away?
- raspasov 5y ago
  Pretty instant. Since there was essentially no internet or nothing substantial was online (mid 90s in Bulgaria), you'd hear from people that there's shortage of something, and it's already too late. The line is hours long and your best option is to simply line up or you're gonna be out of gas, for example. Family members sometimes would take turns waiting at the gas station for a few hours. There were more shortages in the early 90s right after the collapse of the Soviet block, but I don't personally remember those.
oblio 5y ago
Hey, more than cut up! Crumpled! :-D
dheera 5y ago
The reason there was a TP "shortage" in the US is everyone started hoarding it. There really wasn't a shortage, it was just idiots taking advantage of the situation to resell {masks, TP, lysol, sanitizer} to other people on ebay at 10x the cost. If the government had some guts they would put their foot down, personally go to every single one of those ebay sellers' homes, throw them in jail, and then restrict sales of all of the above products to a generous and reasonable amount per person with government ID required to purchase. Problem would have been solved. But our government is too chicken to do that.
- nickpp 5y ago
  The reason we had true shortages in Eastern Europe in the 80s in because the government thought it knew better and interfered (planned). The reason you had fake shortages last year is exactly because the government stayed out of it.
  - dheera 5y ago
    And because the government stayed out of it the poor got shafted out of basic necessities. Not a world I would like to live in. There wasn't even an actual shortage in the manufacturing of TP, so if the government rationed it, the rations per person could be extremely generous, to the point that as long as you were using it to wipe your ass instead of an investment vehicle you wouldn't even need to think about the limits.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > There wasn't even an actual shortage in the manufacturing of TP Yes, there was, because COVID-related closedowns of job sites and public venues shifted demand from commercial TP to consumer TP which have separate and not-easily-converted production lines (and aren't convenient direct substitutes, because they aren't made for the same fixtures and the commercial versions mostly aren't easily used without fixtures), so there was no way to spool up consumer production to meet increased demands. People were going to the bathroom just as much, and more of it was at home, but the quantity supplied of the TP for home use was constrained. That is a real shortage.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Sometimes I'm happy that was born in yugoslavia, so out of all the communist countries, we had it best... there were shortages of course, long wait times for a yugo... but for us, kids, a trip once or twice a year to italy to buy jeans was a total treat... then we muddied them up, wore them over the pants we came with (or came with old pants, and threw them away), and hoped the customs won't notice or care to complicate stuff and charge import fees.
heavyset_go 5y ago
At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a very real drug shortage[1]. [1] https://www.jhsph.edu/research/affiliated-programs/johns-hopkins-drug-access-and-affordability-initiative/publications/Pandemic_Supply_Chain.pdf https://www.jhsph.edu/research/affiliated-programs/johns-hop...
nimbius 5y ago
Unpopular opinion but I don't feel like comparing the last ten years of a total systemic government collapse to american covid is fair at all. The soviet union died a miserable death at the hands of nationalists, profiteers, and american intervention. Covid was a manageable health crisis that spiraled into a food shortage as well. Beans rice and bottled water simply didn't exist in some stores and with rural america largely dependent on a single Walmart there are no other stores to go to. Our supply chains despite being touted as best in the world collapsed almost overnight.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  > Our supply chains despite being touted as best in the world collapsed almost overnight. Did they though? Were there really people who had to go without necessities for a meaningful length of time? My whole point is that they did not.
beebmam 5y ago
If you live in a low vaccination rate state in the US, you'll probably experience a severe shortage of medical care for the next few months, especially if you need to go to a hospital. My wife is a nurse in an ICU that is at 100% capacity (the majority of which are unvaccinated COVID patients, and a few vaccinated COVID patients too). I imagine in many other countries there will be massive shortages of medical care as delta burns through earth's population. This is probably the worst shortage we'll experience as part of the pandemic, because staffed hospital bed shortages means people will die of conditions they normally wouldn't die from.
rejectedandsad 5y ago
This is true overall, but graphics cards are still basically impossible to get unless you pay 2x-2.5x MSRP. A bit more than a little worse but thankfully relegated to a non-essential product. I was impressed that I had no trouble getting an iPhone 12 Pro within a day, and my friends had no trouble getting M1 MacBooks. If anything it’s the Apple supply chain that might be the most resilient of all.

raspasov 5y ago

My experience exactly. Growing up in the 90s in Bulgaria, my parents had to line up for hours or half a day to fill up gas in the car. This went on for weeks/months. If I complain that people are complaining too much in the modern world, I would be complaining as well. So I won't, otherwise it will be an infinite loop.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
akomtu 5y ago
Someone from North Korea could tell you that USSR people had an easy life. We don't see those stories on HN because there's only one person in NK who has internet.
- Radim 5y ago
  True, there's always someone who has it worse. Obligatory Monty Python sketch: "I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock in the night, half an hour before I went to bed. … And when we got home, our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!" - Monty Python, Four Yorkshiremen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEIApUNVBKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEIApUNVBKg
- raspasov 5y ago
  Absolutely. The most horrific documented history in terms of human conditions I’ve encountered is Unit 731 in Imperial Japan.
  - akomtu 5y ago
    Those were Chinese villagers who could tell North Koreans that whining about lack of food is a privelege when you can go outside and see skies.

contravariant 5y ago

Not sure there ever was a real shortage in toilet paper. I mean sure the stores ran out at some point, but that's mostly because you can only realistically have so many toilet paper in the store at once, so if people buy more for whatever insane reason then it's going to run out soon. The supply didn't ever run into any issues as far as I can tell.

javagram 5y ago
There was still supply of “toilet paper” but not of the kind that was sold in the store. Normally large amounts of commercial paper was sold but that wasn’t in grocery stores and sales stopped because of offices closing. Things got figured out eventually both as panic buying subsided and some commercial paper (single rolls, etc) was diverted to the grocery store supply chain.
- scott_s 5y ago
  Correct; there was a market shift, where all of the demand for commercial toilet paper went to consumer toilet paper. Because of that shift, there was a real shortage in consumer toilet paper. Unfortunately, the myth that this shortage was entirely an induced panic seems to have caught on. For more, see https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/4/3/21206942/toilet-paper-coronavirus-shortage-supply-chain https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/4/3/21206942/toilet-paper...
  - bsder 5y ago
    > Unfortunately, the myth that this shortage was entirely an induced panic People don't get that even a 25% jump in consumption is going to take quite a while to rattle through our optimized supply chains. Everything has been optimized to the penny for exactly the consumption as it exists--and not a whit more. Inventory anywhere is seen as a dire business failing to be eradicated. As such, there is zero cushion against even small demand changes. Maximally efficient is minimally robust.
raspasov 5y ago
There might have been a short-term panic over-buying plus the fact that everybody all of a sudden was staying home (and *ahem*, going to the toilet at home more) as opposed to going to the office. That's just a hypothesis, I haven't looked at any data. But your point is essentially correct, I assume it just takes a bit of time to shift the supply from commercial/business channels (delivering to office buildings in the city) to consumer ones (delivering to stores like Costco, Walmart, etc).

ozim 5y ago

In absolute terms you are right. In relative terms well in east block in 80s you were not expecting to have anything on the shelves when you went to the shop. You were expecting to wipe with newspaper for rest of your life and sometimes if you are lucky get rolls of TP. When we live nowadays, we plan that we go to the shop and we will have it. Like a car example, your father was not planning a road trip next year because he knew he is not going to get a car. Nowadays people might plan a road trip make arrangements and then be surprised by car shortage - who is losing more? I expect that person who made arrangements for a road trip and then got nothing because there are no ICUs to make cars.

xyzelement 5y ago
On one level I agree with you: happiness = reality - expectations. However what I am saying is that we don't actually have real impact on our lives today. From what I can tell, nobody actually failed to get a car and had to cancel their road trip (to use your example)
- bdcravens 5y ago
  Tangent, but wouldn't it be happiness = expections - reality?
  - sk5t 5y ago
    No, high but unmet expectations are the opposite of happiness.
raspasov 5y ago
Perhaps surprised that they can't make the trip in the car with the specifically selected Premium Leather Seats and the Piano Black trim within the next 2 weeks? :) In all seriousness, that's not entirely true. From first person accounts I've heard, in the early 80s and throughout the 70s everything was more or less OK in the Soviet block. Of course the selection was not as great as in the West, but essential 20th century conveniences were available. In the late 80s things really started to fall apart and it became painfully obvious that their economic model is not competitive and ultimately unsustainable.

KozmoNau7 5y ago

As an observation, we have become extremely accustomed to the unprecedented easy with which we can buy things, from a gigantic selection of vendors, levels of quality and design, and other (real or artificial) differentiators. Now that this comfortable situation is starting to unravel even slightly, the reaction is one of incredulous disbelief. "Surely this can't be happening, we live in prosperous times!" seems to be the gist of a lot of people's reactions. We have become so used to (near-)instant gratification, that maybe we need to take a step back and recalibrate our desires, demands and expectations. I'm glad my family has always had a modest outlook and ability to comfortably live within our means, often finding creative solutions when money was a bit short. It has ingrained in me that compromise is not a hateful thing, realistic expectations make everything more manageable. For instance, I don't hold the specific car I own• to be some essential part of my identity or image. I take the more practical view that if it performs the tasks I need and meets an acceptable level of quality and economy, I am satisfied. Then it doesn't matter if it's a Mercedes, a Toyota or a KIA. If someone looks down on me or thinks less of me because they don't agree with my choice, then that is their problem, not mine. • I don't own one right now, but it goes for any other possession, really. Moderation needs to come back into fashion, in a big way.

SubiculumCode 5y ago
Is there a button for, I don't agree 100% but your comment shouldn't be gray?
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  People really don't like having their overconsumption and shallow consumerism-based self-images pointed out.
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    And some of them make money out of it; some probably read also HN. Upvoted, of course.
chihuahua 5y ago

djitz 5y ago

Cubans have a saying “cuando no hay papel de baño, el culo aprende a leer.” When there is no toilet paper, your ass learns to read.

apengwin 5y ago
What does this mean, actually? Are you picking and choosing which newspaper sections to keep, or are you just sitting on the toilet a lot more?
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago
  You’re wiping with a newspaper.
A_non_e-moose 5y ago
Wonder how long that saying will last when ebook readers and paper-free trends hit that market.
mbg721 5y ago
For all the horrors that go along with living in a failed state, I'm sort of looking forward to a new golden age of dark humor.

vishnugupta 5y ago

Similar experience. In India I tagged along with my father when he applied for a physical phone connection when I was in class 8. By the time the application made it through the bureaucratic labyrinthine and all sorts of hurdles I was in class 10. So now a days when I see someone rant for 2 month wait period for a car I silently laugh. The current generation though is growing up getting conditioned to instant gratification. Listening to my favourite song for me, while growing up, meant convincing my father to give me money, walking to a cassette store, wading through their catalogue and finally get it. So for me waiting comes naturally. In a way for my generation (and earlier) waiting is second nature. Wait in line for movie tickets, at bank counter, ration stores, just to name a few.

u801e 5y ago
> when I see someone rant for 2 month wait period for a car I silently laugh. Things improve, so people's expectations change. People from generations ago could "silently laugh" at someone complaining about a missed flight and a long layover when they had to travel by sea instead of air.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
curiousgal 5y ago
Having grown up in a Third World country makes almost every issue people around me complain about nontrivial. But that doesn't mean that they are. Just because others had/have it harder doesn't make those issues any less valid.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  > ...doesn't make those issues any less valid. Certainly, the issues are indeed valid for them and nothing to be scoffed at. What is fascinating about India of my growing up years was that most of the scarcity was artificial, mostly due to government regulations and policies. So money didn't speed up things in a big way. But all that has changed unrecognisably now. Now, if one has money there's almost nothing that can't be gotten.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

You are just a little early. TP and ammo were user-caused panics. Superficial. Microchip/Atmel just gave me 50 week lead times on really common chips. My products use these common chips, so do a TON of other things. If you can’t buy a tooshbrush or a thermostat in a few months, you might not realize it’s because of chip shortage or containers. I think things are going to get worse. Our supply chains aren’t resilient, more than they are so large it takes a lot/longer time to see effects. I think we’re going to hit the peak of the bullwhip soon and it’s going to surprise a lot of people what shutting the world down for almost 2 years will do.

cascom 5y ago
It seems like ammo has been in experiencing semi-perpetual issues for the past 12+ years
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  That’s not unfair. The biggest “real” one I can think of was Sandy Hook, the biggest “fake” (consumer caused and perpetuated) was the 2016 election, after Trump won, 22lr ammo was impossible to find. Gun store talk is always bad (said as a gun guy that doesn’t like gun store bullshit) but this was on a whole different level. This latest… similar, but worse obviously. At least there is a real world event tied to it. It’s coming down, but I feel like between inflation and commodity prices we aren’t going to see pre-panic prices ever again. Extremely skeptical I’ll be able to get 1k of 9mm delivered to my door under $250 going forward let alone the previous $160. It’s a larger condition that there is distrust of government, the spread of bullshit at light speeds, diminishing personal freedoms, and a media cheering it all on. So I get why people are hording bullets a bit, but it’s funny that actual good defensive ammo isn’t more sought after. Just the cheap training stuff.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    Ammo is weird because you have the government and consumer markets. We only see shortages for consumers. High prices and a larger market should attract increased manufacturing capacity. Could be interesting for a new highly automated robotic factory to bring down costs?

syshum 5y ago

>>What this means to me is What this means to me is capitalism is awesome, and people attempting to destroy it or replace it would rather have the world you describe from the USSR... Remember kids, with capitalism you some times have bread lines, with socialism you some times have bread....

squarefoot 5y ago
Capitalism is not bad per se, but capitalism without control can be disastrous. We have not yet reached the point in which corporations took over on governments; the process already started, but the complete takeover at global scale will need some time, from several decades to a couple centuries or so. When it will happen, living under socialism or capitalism won't be that different anymore for those who are not part of the elite.
- syshum 5y ago
  Corporations are not capitalism... Corporation are fictitious legal entities created by government. With out government there can be no corporations. Corporatism is not "capitalism without control", Corportism is the direct result of governments picking winners and loosers in the market place. It is the direct result of government putting their hands on the scale of the market. So expecting government to solve the problem it created is foolish. I have no love for corporation, or corporatism. you want to eliminate that I am all for it. However lets stop blaming capitalism for the problems created by government
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    That's the "without control" I was referring to.

paganel 5y ago

> For example, in USSR I remember wiping my ass with cut-up newspaper for months at a time. As a Romanian who grew up as a kid in the '80s and the '90s I'm sort of glad that this was a shared Eastern-European experience, it's something that people from the other side of the wall will most probably never understand completely. When I was spending the summer at my grandparents me and my brother were sometime wiping our asses off with pages taken from "Munca de Partid" (roughly translated as "Party Work"), which was the official magazine of the Romanian Communist Party's Central Committee. Our granddad had been a communist mayor in the village and he had almost the entire collection of those magazines. [1] https://www.cosminnasui.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Munca-de-partid-nr-2-1989.jpg https://www.cosminnasui.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Munca...

nickpp 5y ago
I still wonder what effect all that lead (from the newspaper ink) will have on our rectums' health.
renewiltord 5y ago
Out of curiosity, did no one transition to using water jets like in Asia or was that even more expensive?
- paganel 5y ago
  In the countryside most of the times we didn't have running water at the place where we were doing our thing, it was essentially just a hole in the ground with some stuff around it. In the city usually the apartment bathrooms were too small for a bidet-like appliance to be installed, and even if the place had been there the communist authorities/institutions that had been building those apartments were regarding the bidets as too "bourgeois".

code_duck 5y ago

Most Americans have absolutely no idea what it is like to endure that sort of hardship. I mean, in the most extreme examples I know adults who act like they're going to starve because their peas were touching their potatoes.

midev 5y ago
> Most Americans have absolutely no idea what it is like to endure that sort of hardship Which is great! Despite the flaws of capitalism, it's literally the point! As supply chains were impacted, new businesses and solutions filled the void. Given the vast amount of competition in things like toilet paper, automotive, etc, "shortages" just meant not getting your favorite brand for a few weeks. > I know adults who act like they're going to starve because their peas were touching their potatoes. I would take this over the horror shows of communism any day. It's never a knock to say "your country is so good you've never had the massive hardships we have had!"
- ghaff 5y ago
  Just one (somewhat trivial but perhaps not) thing was all the entrepreneurial activity by individual and adjacent businesses to create more stylish/higher quality/etc. masks. Now perhaps one could make a rational argument that we'd be better off with just a bunch of standard N95 masks period. But people are funny and one shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
- code_duck 5y ago
  Yes, my criticism is not directed towards the effectiveness of the supply chain. It’s true that we are mostly rich with consumer goods. However there are also numerous very serious problems with how we live in the United States, such as sustainability, even distribution of resources, efficiency and waste. My point was that people in the United States do not have experience dealing with even very minor hardships effectively. If they were presented with truly difficult physical situations similar to what people in many parts of the world deal with frequently, they would not be able to handle it effectively on a number of levels.

notheretoo 5y ago

That’s because the shortages you experienced were real. The shortages we’ve had over the pandemic are greatly exaggerated by our trash tabloid media which vice is a prime offender.

seriousquestion 5y ago

That's important perspective. What did it look like in the early days of the shortage tho? Did it start off as minor and become more severe over time? Or did it go from plentiful to none right away?

raspasov 5y ago
Pretty instant. Since there was essentially no internet or nothing substantial was online (mid 90s in Bulgaria), you'd hear from people that there's shortage of something, and it's already too late. The line is hours long and your best option is to simply line up or you're gonna be out of gas, for example. Family members sometimes would take turns waiting at the gas station for a few hours. There were more shortages in the early 90s right after the collapse of the Soviet block, but I don't personally remember those.

oblio 5y ago

Hey, more than cut up! Crumpled! :-D

dheera 5y ago

The reason there was a TP "shortage" in the US is everyone started hoarding it. There really wasn't a shortage, it was just idiots taking advantage of the situation to resell {masks, TP, lysol, sanitizer} to other people on ebay at 10x the cost. If the government had some guts they would put their foot down, personally go to every single one of those ebay sellers' homes, throw them in jail, and then restrict sales of all of the above products to a generous and reasonable amount per person with government ID required to purchase. Problem would have been solved. But our government is too chicken to do that.

nickpp 5y ago
The reason we had true shortages in Eastern Europe in the 80s in because the government thought it knew better and interfered (planned). The reason you had fake shortages last year is exactly because the government stayed out of it.
- dheera 5y ago
  And because the government stayed out of it the poor got shafted out of basic necessities. Not a world I would like to live in. There wasn't even an actual shortage in the manufacturing of TP, so if the government rationed it, the rations per person could be extremely generous, to the point that as long as you were using it to wipe your ass instead of an investment vehicle you wouldn't even need to think about the limits.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > There wasn't even an actual shortage in the manufacturing of TP Yes, there was, because COVID-related closedowns of job sites and public venues shifted demand from commercial TP to consumer TP which have separate and not-easily-converted production lines (and aren't convenient direct substitutes, because they aren't made for the same fixtures and the commercial versions mostly aren't easily used without fixtures), so there was no way to spool up consumer production to meet increased demands. People were going to the bathroom just as much, and more of it was at home, but the quantity supplied of the TP for home use was constrained. That is a real shortage.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

Sometimes I'm happy that was born in yugoslavia, so out of all the communist countries, we had it best... there were shortages of course, long wait times for a yugo... but for us, kids, a trip once or twice a year to italy to buy jeans was a total treat... then we muddied them up, wore them over the pants we came with (or came with old pants, and threw them away), and hoped the customs won't notice or care to complicate stuff and charge import fees.

heavyset_go 5y ago

At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a very real drug shortage[1]. [1] https://www.jhsph.edu/research/affiliated-programs/johns-hopkins-drug-access-and-affordability-initiative/publications/Pandemic_Supply_Chain.pdf https://www.jhsph.edu/research/affiliated-programs/johns-hop...

nimbius 5y ago

Unpopular opinion but I don't feel like comparing the last ten years of a total systemic government collapse to american covid is fair at all. The soviet union died a miserable death at the hands of nationalists, profiteers, and american intervention. Covid was a manageable health crisis that spiraled into a food shortage as well. Beans rice and bottled water simply didn't exist in some stores and with rural america largely dependent on a single Walmart there are no other stores to go to. Our supply chains despite being touted as best in the world collapsed almost overnight.

xyzelement 5y ago
> Our supply chains despite being touted as best in the world collapsed almost overnight. Did they though? Were there really people who had to go without necessities for a meaningful length of time? My whole point is that they did not.

beebmam 5y ago

If you live in a low vaccination rate state in the US, you'll probably experience a severe shortage of medical care for the next few months, especially if you need to go to a hospital. My wife is a nurse in an ICU that is at 100% capacity (the majority of which are unvaccinated COVID patients, and a few vaccinated COVID patients too). I imagine in many other countries there will be massive shortages of medical care as delta burns through earth's population. This is probably the worst shortage we'll experience as part of the pandemic, because staffed hospital bed shortages means people will die of conditions they normally wouldn't die from.

rejectedandsad 5y ago

This is true overall, but graphics cards are still basically impossible to get unless you pay 2x-2.5x MSRP. A bit more than a little worse but thankfully relegated to a non-essential product. I was impressed that I had no trouble getting an iPhone 12 Pro within a day, and my friends had no trouble getting M1 MacBooks. If anything it’s the Apple supply chain that might be the most resilient of all.